


Ten Times Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain Got Very, Very Angry

by QueerCosette



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: 10+1 Things, 5+1 Things, Animal Death, But I'm not going to change their canon characterisation, Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain, Disabled Character, Dissection, F/M, Focusses on my OC Carlotta, I just think what Kagami did to Marinette in Heart Hunter was really shitty, I wanted to write a bit more about her, I'll add more characters etc. when I update, Kagami Tsurugi Salt, Lila Rossi salt, Misunderstandings, Post-Episode: s03 Miracle Queen (The Battle of the Miraculous Part 2), You don't have to read this if you don't want to, also I was really into Narnia when I started writing this, also features Adrien being impossible - or at least very difficult - to dislike, anyway she's an idiot who cares a lot about her cousin Marinette, but not on-screen Carlotta's parents are professional biologists, disturbingly creative swearing, just to warn anyone reading
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22148296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerCosette/pseuds/QueerCosette
Summary: Plus One Time She Was Glad She'd Never Followed Through On Any Of Her Threats.Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain definitely inherited the Dupain passion, as well as the determination to throw herself between threats and her friends.However, her common sense and critical thinking could definitely use some work.A little story I wrote to try and work on my ability to characterise original characters. You don't have to read it, but I'd really appreciate it if you did.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine/Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 24





	Ten Times Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain Got Very, Very Angry

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read any of my other stuff, I've referenced and written about Carlotta before (formerly María). I actually have my own blog for her - @whalemiraculousau - if you want to go follow it. I wanted to work on her characterisation before writing more of A Miraculous Musical, so this happened. Also I'm salty.

#  **1 – Chloé Bourgeois, Winter 2010**

Chloé Bourgeois and Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain did most decidedly _not_ get off to a great start.

Like her cousin Marinette, Carlotta was always extremely passionate about those things she considered right and wrong.

Unlike Marinette, Carlotta had three siblings (well, two when she first met Chloé) and as such had not yet grown out of the phase where plain brute violence was the most effective option for getting back at another child.

To set the scene, it was December in 2010, and _The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader_ starring Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes and Ben Barnes had just been released in cinemas. Carlotta had been lucky enough to see the film before she’d joined her cousin for the holidays, but Marinette was yet to see it. A voracious reader, Carlotta had barely left the cinema before digging out a copy of the original book to see how it compared. She only had the last chapter to read when Chloé had walked past the two girls in the park, butler in tow, and Carlotta had excitedly been expounding to Marinette about how cool one of the battle scenes was (without giving away too many spoilers, of course) when Chloé had stopped and sneered loudly at Marinette for not having seen the film yet.

Carlotta might have let her get away with it if Chloé hadn’t followed it up by adding, “It’s not that good, at the end Edmund and Lucy aren’t allowed back to Narnia.” A smirk that was unbelievably malicious for a child curled across her face. “Oops, spoilies!”

Even though she’d been pulled away by Uncle Tom, and given a very stern talking-to by her own father and mother about how you shouldn’t hit another child even if they do something you don’t like, Carlotta maintained a firm belief that Chloé’s butler had found it funny when she’d hit the spoiled brat deservingly in the nose with the corner of her (special-box-set-hardback-edition-complete-with-maps) copy of _The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader_.

#  **2 and 3 – Katia Masson-Duchemin and Jean Amour, Summer 2013**

Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain’s first heartbreak came at 13.

She’d met 15-year-old Jean Amour in Paris while visiting Marinette over the summer, and the two had hit it off right away. Jean claimed to have an interest in cetology when she told him what her parents did for a living; in retrospect, it should have been her first clue that he was lying for his own benefit when he didn’t know any of the most basic information about the subject.

He’d thought whales were fish, for Christ’s sake!

But no, she was blinded by sweet, naïve, pseudo-obsessive, thirteen-year-old love. To the point where she all but ditched poor Marinette over the summer to hang around with Jean! And… for what? To listen to him prattle on about violent video games she didn’t understand? To spend money on movies she didn’t want to see and popcorn she wouldn’t eat, so Jean could slip an arm over her shoulders and plant a sticky, fish-lipped kiss on her mouth and try to cop a feel of her still-practically-flat chest?

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he barely kept in touch after she returned to Spain. It should have come as even less of a surprise when his full-time-had-been-in-Florida-all-summer-clearly-had-less-self-respect-than-Carlotta real girlfriend Katia Masson-Duchemin answered his videochat for him one day and told Carlotta in no uncertain terms to “keep your slutty little lips away from Jean”.

Carlotta can’t say she’s exactly proud of what she said to Katia in response.

Indeed, the only thing to be proud of was the creativity in the threats. Coat-hangers, in Carlotta’s opinion, are overlooked potential weapons. Katia looked thoroughly shocked, scared and offended by the time Carlotta ended the call, and half the threats had been in a language Katia couldn’t even understand.

Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain cried for a week over Jean Amour. Then, while at a dissection sight in Ireland with her parents, she came to the conclusion (while trying to ignore the smell of stomach acid and undigested garbage) that crying over boys was pointless, because it wouldn’t make them want you again.

But if she ever ran into Jean Amour again, she was going to repossess his kneecaps.

#  **4 – Adrien Agreste, Summer 2016**

Carlotta was less upset about moving from Asturias to Paris than she’d thought she’d be. But since her mother wouldn’t be able to do practical work for a long while until she’d healed from her accident, and had been offered a post in the biology department at l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, it seemed the most logical thing to do. It also meant Élisa would be near her father and brother while Juan-Miguel Sr was travelling, and the apartment was near enough to Marinette’s house that it meant Carlotta would go to the same school. Carlotta was only a few months older, so they would be in the same year – possibly even the same class. At 11 years old, Geneviève and Juanito weren’t too pleased about the move, but since Carlotta’s relationship with both was always either ‘I’ll help you hide the body’ or ‘don’t even breathe at me’, and spent a good lot of time being the latter rather than the former, she decided they would just have to deal with it. Victoíre didn’t have much to say about the move, but she was only two and knew five words, two of which she couldn’t pronounce properly yet, so it could be inferred she didn’t really have a strong opinion on the matter.

Carlotta had grown up a fair bit since the last time she’d been here; at only-just-sixteen, she already stood at 5’11, while her baby-cheeks had matured into high cheekbones and a sharp jaw, and the years of carrying heavy equipment to and fro from dissection sights and labs had paid off into biceps, calves and shoulder-blades that almost rippled with silent strength. If she’d been in Paris any earlier, she could have fair well been a candidate for one of Ladybug’s backup heroes.

And speaking of the backup heroes, the Sugrue-Dupain family arrived in Paris only a few days after the Miracle Queen incident. Carlotta had been eager to discuss the incident with Marinette, but to her great worry, her cousin seemed lethargic and unwilling to talk about much. She refused to speak about whatever was bothering her, and Carlotta was left in the dark until she (quite literally) bumped into Luka Couffaine.

After he’d apologised for knocking her off her skateboard, and she’d apologised for landing on him and overbalancing his bike as a result, and they’d insisted on buying each other ice-cream to make up for it (and both blushed very much when André insisted on giving Luka “chocolate for her hair and blackberry for her eyes” and Carlotta “blueberry for his eyes and liquorice for his hair”) he’d asked her about herself and the fact that they both knew Marinette came up. And when Luka mentioned he reckoned Marinette had too much on her plate at the moment, she couldn’t help but be curious. And Luka, glad that someone else was looking out for his wonderful friend Marinette, had been only too happy to tell her everything.

And that was how Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain decided she hated Adrien Agreste without ever meeting him.

She’d been in Paris for about three weeks when her father sent a package from England. In it was a bundle of bubblewrap and a letter explaining it was a whale’s tooth that had an odd piece of jewellery embedded into it. Élisa was delighted to have something new to examine under a microscope, and Carlotta was doubly delighted when the letter continued that she would be welcome to the jewellery if it ever came out. Other girls would have been rather disgusted at the thought of wearing something that had been in a whale’s mouth, but cetology had been Carlotta’s life for as long as she could remember, and she couldn’t think of a better gift. The journey, it seemed, had actually knocked the jewel loose, and it turned out to be a rather grimy silver hairclip decorated with purplish gems – very old-fashioned, but beautifully made, and it would look wonderful once she’d cleaned it properly. As her mother began to marvel over the tooth, Carlotta skipped off to wash the clip with lemon juice.

Once it was clean, the last thing she was expecting was for a tiny sprite-like creature to zoom out of it and greet her. Well, at least… it did _sound_ friendly.

“Wènhòu! Wǒ shì Eliklocation de Kwami, Klikk. Nín bìxū shì wǒ de xīn chí yǒu rén. Nǐ yǒu yú ma? Huò xiā huò yóuyú. Bèi kùn zài hóngzūn zhōng de yīqiān nián quèshí shǐ yīgèrén èle.”

“Jesús joder...” Carlotta yelped, falling off her chair. “Christ sur une pointe… ¿Estoy tomando ácido?”

…So Carlotta’s first words to Klikk could have been more encouraging.

Klikk, however, was very dignified about the whole thing, and was good enough to repeat herself in Spanish, and then again in French.

“Greetings! I am Klikk, the Kwami of Echolocation. You must be my new holder. Do you have any fish? Or prawns or squid. A thousand years trapped in a hair clip does make one rather hungry.”

To Carlotta’s credit, she did not throw anything at the Kwami or call for her mother. And once she’d got over the shock that magic existed, she found Klikk to be extremely personable – and rather adorable.

Growing up with scientists as parents meant that Carlotta was very good with her observation – both visual and logical – and upon discovering this, Klikk was delighted to have a holder capable of thinking out of the box. Her powers always worked at their best when paired with a holder good with solutions to problems. Carlotta, of course, jumped at the chance to become a superhero like the famous Chat Noir and Ladybug she’d heard so much about. “And, of course, they could use the help too,” she thought aloud. “Since their previous team has been betrayed by Miracle Queen.”

And thus, Cachalotte was born. Carlotta, in spite of her tendency to rush headfirst into stupid and dangerous situations, had given the matter a lot of thought before she transformed for the first time, and decided a little extra armour wouldn’t go amiss on her suit. Neither would a violet highlight in her hair – and the majority of the suit needed to be practical enough that she could run and jump and perform all sorts of insane stunts like she’d seen Ladybug and Chat Noir do on the Ladyblog. Never in person, though – the last time she’d been in Paris, they hadn’t appeared yet, and this Hawkmoth fellow seemed to be keeping quiet since the Miracle Queen debacle.

In the months of the summer holidays that followed, Carlotta began practicing sneaking out of her window, using her powers, patrolling under cover of night, finding hiding places that could be used to transform, doing hundreds of situps to increase her pain tolerance and improve her core, and coming up with potential alibies.

And then, while patrolling along les Berges de Seine, next to the Alma Bridge, she’d discovered a Gabriel night shoot for eveningwear. The sight of it reminded her of her other project she’d been planning to get to work on as soon as school started up again: getting revenge on Adrien Agreste for the way he’d hurt Marinette.

“Five more minutes and we’ll break!” someone on the set shouted, and Carlotta – or rather, Cachalotte, focussed in on Adrien’s annoyingly pretty face. _Best_ , she decided, _to just scare him away from her._ Carlotta, as previously seen, had a rather unfortunate habit of making decisions without listening to everyone it would affect. In this case, she had not listened to _anyone_ it might affect – not Marinette, not Adrien, not Klikk, and least of all her own doctor.

Carlotta had been born with a rare genetic blood condition that meant her arteries sometimes malfunctioned and as a result her eyes would appear to flood with blood; luckily she could normally cry the blockage away, but in the meantime it was often difficult to see when this happened, and had the added bonus of making her look borderline terrifying. It could easily be triggered by too much blood rushing to the head, so her doctor had advised her against handstands and hanging upside down. Cachalotte was about to ignore this advice, and watched as Adrien headed into the trailer that had been set up for him before slinking through the shadows and finding the open window of his trailer. She managed to hook her knees through the window, and hung there until she felt lightheaded, before using her newly strong core to flip herself up through the window.

She’d struck gold. There were curtains over all the windows for privacy, so Adrien hadn’t seen her legs (as stated, she really wasn’t good at thinking things through sometimes), and the trailer was dimly lit so he wouldn’t be exposed to bright lights that contrasted too much with the environment outside. She snorted softly. What a ponce.

Adrien turned at the sound, hopefully scared. She sensed him rather than saw him; her vision had gone blurry.

“Adrien Agreste,” she hissed in her best ‘scary’ voice (the one she used when her sister borrowed her clothes). “I am here to –”

“Let me guess,” Adrien interrupted. He had a nice voice. She decided she hated it. “You’re an Akuma who wants to turn me hideously ugly, or kidnap me, or for me to announce that we’re dating to the whole world –” He actually _chuckled_ at the disgusted face she made at the last suggestion. This was not going as planned. “OK, guessing you’re not a fan. So is it kidnapping, or uglifying this time?”

“What?” Cachalotte blinked, and her vision got a little less blurry. “No, I’m – I’m just here to verbally threaten you.”

“Oh. Alright then. Rival modelling agency?”

Cachalotte blinked again. “What? No! How – how many times has this happened?”

“Enough,” he said conversationally. “So, the threatening?”

“Oh, right,” Cachalotte said rather confusedly. “Yeah. OK.” She drew herself up to her full height and put on the Voice again. “Stay away from Marinette Dupain-Cheng, or your life will be cursed with misery and everything you hold dear will burn!” She considered this for a moment, then added, “Or more likely I’ll kick you in the nuts. But it will be painful!”

Adrien looked angry for the first time since she’d climbed into his trailer. “I think I’ll take the crotch-shot over staying away from Marinette!” His voice softened again when he said her name, and Cachalotte began feeling more and more like she should have just stayed home. “She’s wonderful, she makes my life brighter for being in it, and there is very little I wouldn’t do to make her happy! I don't know where you get off trying to keep us apart, but she is one of my best friends in the whole wide world, so -”

“Wait," Cachalotte interrupted, frowning. "So you… _didn’t_ mean to hurt her?”

“I hurt her?!” Adrien looked horrified. “Oh my Gods, what did I do? I need to fix it now, shit, tell me what I need to do!”

Unused to teenage boys showing concern when they had hurt someone else’s feelings (remember, her only real experience with romance and relationships of any sort had been Jean Amour two years previously), Cachalotte made a squirmy sort of noise and shrugged helplessly, unsure what she was really supposed to say. “Shit man, I don’t know,” she managed at last. “I’m just here to scare you. I honestly thought you’d done it on purpose.” Ignoring Adrien’s plea to know _what_ he’d done, she started backing towards the window. “I’m just gonna go home now… yeah.”

“Wait!” Adrien threw out a hand to stop her from leaving. “At least let me call Ladybug so she can… y’know. Get rid of…” he gestured at her ensemble.

“What?” Cachalotte seemed to be saying that word rather a lot tonight. She realised what he meant after a second, and shook her head, laughing awkwardly. “Oh, no need. I’m not an Akuma. I swear. Just dramatic.”

He nodded, frowning like he didn’t quite believe her. “Then what’s with the –” He pointed at his own eyes, and she waved an airy hand.

“Rare blood condition – don’t worry, I’ll be fine in, like, ten minutes tops. Right. Well.”

“See you around, I guess?”

“Yeah. I guess.” And with that, Cachalotte hopped out the window and swung back home via her grappling hook. When she got there, she got some frozen prawns for Klikk, then laid face down on her bed and screamed confusedly into her pillow for ten minutes, before sticking on ‘The Final Battle’ from Les Misérables to speed up the crying process. With her eyes cleared, she put on pyjamas and got into bed, unable to come to any coherent thought except that she would never again try to get involved in her cousin’s bizarre pseudo-romantic relationships.

When she told Luka about it a few days later – leaving out the part about Klikk and Cachalotte and the fact that it had taken place in Adrien’s trailer at night – he laughed a little and said that was just how Adrien was. “It’s Kagami I blame anyway,” he added. “She was a really terrible friend to Marinette. Who on Earth thinks it’s a good idea to flaunt your relationship to a girl in love with your boyfriend?”

The conversation drifted to Jagged Stone’s most recent record, and eventually to whether guitar or electric violin was the more superior instrument, and Luka jokingly suggested a musical duel at some point, which she found herself agreeing to for reasons she wasn’t entirely sure of – Luka’s presence and voice and laugh did something to her heart that felt unfamiliar but not unpleasant – but she filed the name ‘Kagami’ into the back of her mind for later; a lead to be pursued when school returned in a few days.

Perhaps Adrien hadn’t meant to hurt Marinette, but if Kagami had indeed known of Marinette’s feelings for Adrien, and had done what she did anyway, then she would have good reason to be wary of Carlotta. A fiercely loyal friend once she’d decided she liked you, Carlotta had no time for girls who did that sort of thing.

Especially to Marinette.

#  **5 – Kagami Tsurugi, Autumn 2015**

Kagami Tsurugi had been over the moon when her mother had agreed she could change schools and attend François-Dupont full-time; Tomoe seemed to have decided that allowing Kagami to be in close contact with her friends would mean she wouldn’t get into trouble so often. And she would be in a class with people she already knew!

Of course, things with Marinette had been awkward since… yeah. But Adrien would be there! And Kagami was sure that Marinette would be friendly again in no time.

She hadn’t considered that Marinette was very popular with her classmates.

From the second she walked through the door, the room changed from being filled with calm, early-morning babble to silent animosity. All of the girls – and several of the boys – gazed at her with expressions varying from coolness to coldness to hot anger to – from one girl in the back row – downright disgust. Even Adrien was avoiding her eyes.

Marinette was staring at her lap in silence. The angry stare of the redhead seated next to her seemed to increase in heat.

Kagami was silent as Ms Bustier introduced her to the class. She’d been hoping for a seat next to Adrien, but he’d already got a deskmate. At least she wouldn’t have to sit next to Lila or Chloé, who also had desk partners. The only empty seat was next to the brunette in the back row, whose disgust deepened when Ms Bustier said, “Kagami, you can sit next to Carlotta, up in the back row.”

“ _Follame suavemente con una motosierra,”_ Carlotta muttered as Kagami sat down. It was in a language Kagami didn’t recognize – although it was definitely one of the romance languages, and definitely European from her accent. Several girls gave her pitying glances – Carlotta, not Kagami.

The class was given a silent period to work on their literature dissertations; while Ms Bustier was in the room, they were silent, flicking between books and scribbling notes. Kagami was allowed to review the curriculum to see if she was behind or ahead in any subjects, and the animosity seemed to die down.

Then Ms Bustier left, and within seconds the room resembled a bear-garden.

Everyone began talking to their deskmates, either gossiping or asking for notes. Even Marinette was deep in conversation with her red-haired friend. Carlotta was the only one who didn’t move, continuing to flick between her two books – one a thick green novel, the other a slim navy volume.

Kagami decided that it was better late then never to try making friends, and she squinted at the cover of the green novel when Carlotta put it down to scan the blue one. “‘ _The Life And Times Of The Wicked Witch Of The West_ ’,” she read aloud from the cover. “Is that like ‘ _The Wizard Of Oz’_?”

Carlotta ignored her, pausing to scribble down what looked like a quote. She then grabbed a green highlighter and drew an arrow between two notes. After a moment, she pulled out her phone, typed something into Thesaurus.com, then nodded in satisfaction. Kagami hoped that she was simply concentrating and would be friendlier when she finished.

She tried again, the next time Carlotta paused in her flicking and scribbling to sip from a bottle labelled ‘ ~~water~~ vodka’ (which Kagami hoped was a joke and not an admission). “What’s your dissertation covering? Mine’s already done; I did the themes of power and manipulation in relation to dystopias with ‘ _The Handmaid’s Tale’_ and ‘ _1984’_.”

“Ivan,” Carlotta said, getting up, “would you say this passage contains strong themes of communism?” She grabbed ‘ _The Life And Times’_ and carried it over to show Ivan, a big boy in a punk rock T-shirt.

Ivan read over the passage, shrugging. “I’d stick with anti-establishment,” he decided. Kagami got up and joined them; Ivan’s desk was far messier, but she could see why Carlotta asked him: his two books were ‘ _The Idyll in the Rue Plumet and the Epic in the Rue St. Denis’_ and ‘ _The Communist Manifesto’_.

“You know, I met the author of _‘The Idyll in the Rue Plumet and the Epic in the Rue St. Denis’_ ,” Lila chimed in from behind Ivan. “Ivan, if you need help, you don’t have to ask Carlotta.”

“Victor Hugo died in 1885, you complete and utter nincompoop,” Carlotta said loudly in Lila’s direction.

Kagami giggled, looking at Carlotta hopefully. Carlotta raised a haughty eyebrow, making a little barbell stud glitter.

“Sorry,” Kagami apologized. “I think she’s a nincompoop too.”

Carlotta rolled her eyes, then thanked Ivan and turned back to her desk, accidentally(?) bumping Kagami hard with her shoulder.

The rest of the class passed in much the same way, with Kagami awkwardly trying to make small talk and Carlotta ignoring her. When the bell rang, Ms Bustier popped her head into the classroom and dismissed them, looking harried. “The printers have all stopped working; I might be late back to class after lunch.”

As the class cleared out, Kagami realised she had no idea where to go, and grabbed at Carlotta’s wrist. “Excuse me,” she said, “where’s the cafeteria?”

Quick as a flash, Carlotta twisted her wrist out of Kagami’s grip and grabbed her bicep. Kagami had an unfortunate moment of realising how very much taller than her Carlotta was.

“Let’s make one thing very, _very_ clear,” Carlotta hissed. “We are not friends. You do not touch me. And if you ever try to speak to me or my cousin again, I will – shit – what’s the word…”

“Your cousin?” Kagami managed. Indeed, the blaze in Carlotta’s violet eyes, the determined set of her jaw, and the pattern of freckles across her nose and cheeks, suddenly looked very familiar.

“Marinette,” Carlotta specified. “You don’t go near her. Hurt her again and… _cojones…_ ” She frowned for a moment before letting loose a short, violent-sounding exclamation in her other language. “You’d do better to stay away from both of us,” she finished, returning to French. Her accent was very interesting, actually, because she didn’t seem to have one when she spoke French. Clearly she knew both languages very well, but was more used to the other one, because her French wasn’t stilted like Kagami’s was sometimes. And when she let go of Kagami and marched away with a toss of her long, shiny hair, Kagami rubbed her arm where it might well bruise, knowing in that moment that this was not a girl she wanted to mess with. In spite of her own skill with a sabre, if it came to a fight Carlotta would easily have the height and muscle advantage.

Carlotta glanced back and added, “The cafeteria is upstairs, opposite the library.” Then she slammed the classroom door behind her, making the windows shake, and Kagami realised that Carlotta had been holding back when she’d grabbed her. She picked up her bag with a wince, realising she’d probably eat lunch alone.

She may still have been new at this making-friends business, but even she knew that the tall, well-built cousin of a girl you had recently hurt the feelings of – especially one who wouldn’t be pulled out of school for fighting – was a no-go zone.

**Author's Note:**

> If you know me in real life, you'll know that number 2 and 3 aren't even slightly fucking subtle.
> 
> Also! Carlotta behaves several times in ways that I do not condone. Sometimes there is a little self-projection, but Carlotta is fictional and so can get away with it, and I am not and thus wouldn't. I like to think I have a bit more common sense than she does.


End file.
